NextLevel Pulsar™ Coffee Brewer

A level countertop/scale greatly helps with uniform water flow through the dispersion cap.

Fill the filter area with brew water up to the filter support fins before placing the filter. This ensures a fully saturated base/filter.

When inserting the barrel, make sure it’s inserted completely down against the filter!

Level the coffee bed before brewing. Or WWDT during the bloom.

Pouring: a faster center pour works best for complete water dispersion/bed coverage. On slower pours, keep the kettle spout moving in a circular pattern for even water distribution.

Grinding: We would like to see a more universal language when talking about grind size. Fine, Medium and Course are so abstract and subjective that they’re not very helpful terms. We realize that grind size is only part of the equation, but we feel it’s advantageous to refer to size in microns (1,000 microns = 1mm). This is still somewhat a guestimate but at least it’s referencing a known unit of measurement. On many flat burr grinders ‘Burr Gap’ in microns is another metric to reference.

The Pulsar achieves very good filtration because of the very even flow through the bed (at very low pressure/with little water column), low agitation (disperson cap), no bypass and a high-quality paper filter. Its ability to control flow rate and grind size almost independently, and because of the valve, bloom without dripping.

We suspect filtration is even more important than extraction evenness. Extraction unevenness can still taste great, just different. But worse filtration almost always means worse taste. (Who would have thought filter coffee is all about filtration)

For more acidic brew; grind coarser, shorten the bloom/TBT, pulse pour (keeping the water column lower in the brewer), low/no agitation and low TDS brew water w/ low alkalinity.

The best brews in the Pulsar usually involve a valve restricted flow & low agitation.

A standard dose in the Pulsar is 25g, mini is 15g. These are the same bed depth (approx 17mm dry coffee) so we can grind the same. This bed depth seems to be a great balance between extraction differential and bed filtration and paper filter capacity.

The mini is narrow enough that the jiggle doesn’t work well during a bloom. This combined with the smaller filter (more easily clogged) I rarely do much agitation (WWDT during bloom to get the bed to lift off of the filter initially).

Reminerialize. Apax Labs. This is somewhat a guessing game when always changing up the coffee and not taking notes… I use the most #1 Tonik and #2 Jamm, I use the #3 Lylac sparingly as I’ve gotten some really harsh cups with too much of it.

Even though it may sound like it in some of our sharing, we don’t advocate for pushing EY% to the limit. The brews that balance early extraction / time / dilute generally taste the best and are in the 19 - 21% range.

Experiment broadly! Some very easy to extract coffees (anaerobic/natural/decaf) do well with a 1:10 brewing ratio with dilute. If you taste brown roasty notes, try a lower brew water temps (85c).

Richard’s standard recipe: Closed valve bloom 3x dose (I like about 75-80c bloom temp) | At 30 sec drain | Close valve, add up to approx 1:8 (88c temp) then jiggle dripper to see if anything floats (which it usually does unless the coffee’s ground fine). Wait approx 15 sec and add water to encourage the bed to fall. | At 1:30ish open valve to 1:15 O'clock | Maintain about 2 - 3 cm water column until the target brew ratio/weight. This varies by coffee. Usually 1:14 ... Dense/Washed coffees I do 1:16 ... Anaerobic/special process I do 1:12 | TBT usually between 3:15 and 3:45 | Dilute to 1:17/strength preference